


This Blade, My Honor

by Shadaras



Category: Beowulf: Return To The Shieldlands (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 01:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6684553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Battle is Saray's birthright. However, sometimes battle is best fought with words, not swords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Blade, My Honor

The hilts are right in Saray’s hands, even now, even when she’s tried to use her hard-earned calluses for fishing poles and wood axes instead of polearms and swords, even when she’s tried her best to sit and sew and think only of the trials of Bregan and not how to get close to her target or lull enemies into thinking she’s a simple handmaid, not a bodyguard at all.

She takes a breath, six fallen -- but not dead, she hopes, she is not striking to kill the people of her unsettled new home -- warriors scattered at her feet. The satisfaction of wood striking a chest, a rake used as a spear because the construction is no less solid for the lack of sharpened edges. Two swords from the fallen, weighted and balanced for men’s hands, are now held in hers.

Saray’s arms do not shake. Her hands are steady. Her breaths are calm. Her people are watching, have seen the whole scene play out -- Rheda on her horse, escaping her brother’s madness, and Saray, who she knows they see as beautiful and hard-working but never as a warrior, dispatching Abrecan’s guards with no trouble at all.

Briefly, she spares the time to wonder what they think of her now. She has killed for them before, but that -- a sword swift-cutting a surprised assassin -- was seen as a fluke. It was nothing like this planned and pointed violence. But they do not interfere. They stand, and they stare, and seven more guards find her.

Four spears and three swords point at her, now, and the spears with their reach are the only reason she finds to worry. They will not hurt her.

That honor, she knows, will be reserved for Abrecan, should he will it.

She takes a breath, in the peace that the guards allow her. This is no different from any training exercise, she tells herself, and she meets the guards’ helmeted eyes, and steps.

*

The first time she held a blade she was too young to remember. She is told the story, as she grows, of her father giving her a dagger carved of pine to chew on -- is that the first blade, she wonders sometimes, or was the knife pressed into her hand as a toddler, sure-footed and bright-eyed, the first?

Either way, she has had a blade in her hand as long as she can remember.

She was first-born, first-taught, instructed to defend her honor before she fully understood what that meant. Dirty tricks came alongside proper sword-work, a knee to the balls given as much time and training as how to twist a blade through the bones guarding lungs and heart. She moved, graceful and strong, with the assurance and balance of a court lady (and she was or would be, her mother told her, even if those ranks were meaningless in her childhood), forged from hours of footwork (advance and retreat and step aside and don’t cross your feet you’ll just trip into the dirt).

*

They didn’t expect her to fight, Saray realises as she circles the guards, knocking the rightmost spear aside and bringing her other blade up to his helmet. She twists her sword at the last moment so it hits flat-on, ringing his ears and rattling his brain and sending him stumbling slowly to the ground, out of the fight but not dead.

They had to have seen the guards on the ground, but they still didn’t expect her to fight. They’d expected her to wait, and hear out the aborted “Please come with us”, and drop her (stolen? borrowed) swords. If she didn’t need all her breath to fight, she’d laugh.

The next guard gets tangled in his cloak as he turns to face her. She trips him and stamps on his sword as she disarms the third with a practiced twist of her wrists. Her body hasn’t forgotten this. It’s still as natural as breathing, still the most elegant dance she’s ever learned.

*

She was trained with the other children, their sex being irrelevant to their ability to hold a weapon and defend their home. Her father’s will served her well; she was among the best, and she heard in murmurs that her eyes when fighting shone too brightly to be quite real. She moved without thinking and the thrum of a practice blade hitting her own, or her shield, reverberated through her body, the training patterns as steady as the beat of her heart, and as familiar.

The first time she disarmed a partner, she felt like fire had taken the place of her blood. The first time she came home bloody-faced and grinning, a milk-tooth lost to the slam of her own shield against her face, she didn’t care because she was _alive_ , body singing with the knowledge that she may have been wounded, but she had _won_ , and her opponent was bruised and had tumbled to the ground, her sword at his throat and his eyes wide with the realisation that she would have opened his body had her sword been real and sharp.

*

Two spears bracket her now, and the swordsman in front of her (captain, she realises, of the guard -- the one who started telling her to stand down) is out of her reach unless she wants to give the spearmen an opening. Slowly, Saray circles behind the outer spearman. If she can get enough distance from the other--

But no. The other two warriors complete the flanking maneuver. She’s surrounded.

In the space of a breath, Saray looks at them, sees the opening she could take if she were willing to spill blood -- either hers or her opponents.

*

“Not enemies,” her father told her, time and time again. The captain told her just as many times, for just as many reasons. “They’re your opponents, because they’re your allies who you practice with -- enemies are those who would shed the blood you fight to protect.”

She argued, many times, that they shed blood on the practice field. The answer came back the same way, every time: “They will hold back on a killing blow. They will not maim you with any true intent. They are not your enemies.”

It took until she fought a true battle, against true enemies, for her to fully understand the difference.

 _Enemies_ , she learned, made your blood heat just by existing. _Opponents_ had to do something to earn that favour.

*

“She is not your enemy,” Saray tells them. Her blades are still in a wide guard, protecting her from any strikes they may attempt. “Neither am I.”

The captain sneers at her. “Why are so many of us on the ground, then?”

“I did not strike to kill.” Her arms are steady, her muscles singing with the strain. “I do not want you to run unchecked into an unnecessary battle.”

“Like this one?”

Saray sighs, internally. “This is not a battle. The warig, if they come, will be a battle. There will be blood, then.”

None of them are behind her. That is something. Even, she supposes, as much as she can ask for. The captain takes a step forward, his sword still extended so that if she were to lunge, she’d impale herself before reaching him. “Will you stand down?”

She meets his eyes. “Do not follow her. She escaped. And _think_ on this.”

He does think, and his sword point moves from her heart to her crown to the sky, before it returns to the sheath at his side. His nod, and the softening of his eyes, are true enough. So is his voice when he says, “Stand down.”

Saray lowers her arms slowly to her sides. She can see, in the younger guards, how impressed they are by her control. She smiles, briefly, and then sets the swords on the ground.

She does not take her eyes off them.

The spears around her do not waver.

So she turns, and walks back to her hall, a noble lady with an armed escort, not a prisoner of men who once would answer to her call.

Her honor is safe. Rheda rides to Herot, and Bregan’s reception will shine silver, not gold, now. She lifts her chin, and enters Abrecan’s shadowed home. _He will not see reason,_ her head whispers.

 _But I must try once more,_ answers her heart.

And love, Saray thinks, seeing his wheat-bright hair, neater than she’d expect, is a more terrible blade than any sword she’s ever wielded.

_Ah, father. Why did you not warn me of this?_

Her enemy turns, and Saray smiles, blood burning, as she steps forward with a warrior’s grace hidden in a dancer’s clothes, to take the seat of battle.


End file.
